


the tightrope walker

by deathtothetakennames



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-23 21:41:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathtothetakennames/pseuds/deathtothetakennames
Summary: Sherlock meets a girl named Lou that seems to be his equal





	1. Introducing the Tightrope Walker

**Author's Note:**

> So in the unlikely case people are actually interested in me keeping on writing, this will become a multifandom fic, for now it's just Sherlock and my main character. (I have no idea how the tag thingy works, I'm new to this)

She was weird. That was pretty much the only thing you could clearly say about her character. Totally and genuinely weird.

If you ask her, she'll tell you something different, but I'd say, her story, this story, started on a cold September day in a bush in Cardiff. That's where she was hiding when she found the newspaper.

The newspaper itself wasn't in any way special; in fact, it actually was one of those where you did best not to believe everything that was written in it because most things were brutally exaggerated. But, it was a newspaper, and she was extremely bored without any other chances to distract herself from the fact that she was very likely going to be sitting in that bush for at least an hour without being able to move.

Now, she was usually quite good at sitting completely still because she'd distract herself by noticing all details and coming to conclusions about the things she'd see, but she knew the length and age of every single twig of that particular bush by heart.

She'd sit in that bush two times a month, every fifteen days to be exact, every time the orphanage she lived in played the same hide-and-chase game they'd always play. Those who were found and caught before they reached a safe point would have to help with the housework for the next fifteen days. She wasn't a particularly fast runner so she'd always hide in the same bush she'd found to conceal her thick, ginger curls best.

So there she was, reading a rubbish newspaper someone (completely understandably) had thrown into the bush. She only noticed the article when she read it the third time: "World famous detective Sherlock Holmes solves another baffling case" The case couldn't have been that baffling if all he gets for it is a tiny article in a shitty newspaper. She proceeded to read the article. Apparently this Holmes guy had helped the police trace a burglar. Wow. A burglar. How special. How baffling. Still, the way he's quoted in here, he seems about as excited about it as I am. Maybe even less.

"Time out!" The voice of the supervisor leading the game shrilled through the park. She quietly got up, snuck behind some trees so she wouldn't give her ever-the-same hiding place away and made her way back to the others. The younger kids quietly made way for her, looking ridiculously terrified. For some reason they were scared of her. Until she was thirteen years old, she didn't really know why as she had never actually done anything to them but for a matter of fact, she didn't care. It wouldn't have any use for her if they liked her. On the contrary, if they were scared of her they'd actually sometimes do chores that had been assigned to her without her even asking for it. Somehow she had earned the position of a powerful, terrifying superior whose anger no one wanted to attract. The weird thing was that she couldn't exactly remember why. When she had first arrived at an orphanage, back then as a terrified eight-year old herself, she'd told herself to forget everything about her past. When the police had asked her about her story, she told them exactly that. She'd told them, her face more serious than they'd ever seen it on a little child before; the rather deep, stitched up cut through and above her left upper lip giving her something scarily mature and strong; told them she'd chosen to forget because she'd known remembering all that would've severely traumatised her. She'd still remembered her name, Lucia Jane Winters, and basic things like her birthday, but everything else was gone. Buried deep.

Later, when she had turned thirteen years old, she'd gotten interested in what had happened back then. She'd gone to the police wearing a wig and lots of makeup she'd stolen somewhere to cover the scar on her upper lip and pretended to be researching stuff about old, unsolved cases for school. She'd found out that her father had been some kind of infamous drug dealer leading a large criminal network and that he was assumed to have killed her mother, a prostitute whose corpse had never been found. He had been shot dead in a police bust and his daughter, a weird, potentially traumatised child was living in an orphanage now. After that, she'd felt she'd known enough and left. She'd feel like she was walking on a thin rope she'd built above the depths of her memory. Any moment she could fall. She never tried to find out more again.

Now she was fifteen and didn't really care about the weird rumours going on about her. She almost enjoyed the fact that even some of the supervisors were a bit scared of her.

"Where were you hiding this time, Winters?" One of the boys asked her mockingly. He seemed to find it funny that someone as mature and standing-above-things as her would actually hide in the dirt to avoid having to do housework. "In your nightmares." She whispered, her voice rough and slightly deep for a girl, her accent clearly English but with the sometimes unusual pronunciation of someone who'd learned English at the time children usually learned to speak but then hadn't used it for some years. She turned away from him and walked on, straightening the slightly oversized trench coat she was wearing.

Later that day, when she was sitting at the library computer skipping through the day's news on the website of a proper newspaper, she found him again. "Detective Sherlock Holmes tracks down Gower Street burglar" This time he wasn't famous. This time the case wasn't baffling. But, this time there was a link to his partner's blog. She hesitated for a bit, then she opened the link and began to read. The page was full of slightly overdramatic entries about gloriously solved cases. About two hours later she reached the first entry. "Me and the madman. Me and Sherlock Holmes." She couldn't help but smile. The entire thing seemed so surreal. Usually, she tried not to be jealous of other people's lives, but this time she kind of was. Sherlock Holmes. Solving puzzles. As she scrolled back to the top and skimmed through the blog description, she found another link. "This is the link to his website, although I doubt anyone but him can make sense of the things he writes there" She clicked on it. His page was different than Watson's, different than anything else she'd ever read. At first she didn't understand anything. The words seemed mashed together like random shoes. Then, slowly, remembering what John Watson had written about the cases, she began to puzzle the whole thing together. She realised that Holmes was using similar techniques to the ones she'd practise when she was bored and looking at details. What from Watson's perspective seemed like magic was now, from Holmes' and apparently hers, just a big puzzle with different pieces suggesting different things.

A week later, she only realised she'd been sitting in front of the computer again smiling in marvel when the librarian, a nice tiny lady who'd usually known her as a very closed up, serious person; approached her and whispered: "Hey, Lou, found anything nice?" Lou tried to quickly close the page but it was too late. The librarian was already smiling. "Ah, I see. Sherlock Holmes. Pretty interesting job, right?" Don't let her think you find him interesting. She'll tell everyone. The headmistress will end up buying you a deerstalker. "Oh, no. I just found him looking through the internet. I was smiling at something else." "Ah, I see. Clearly." The woman went away and didn't see Lou going red. The thing was, most of the caretakers were trying to solve the problem that the younger kids were scared of her by trying to embarrass her. If she smiled at an internet page, she was sure the next day everyone was going to think she was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and that she'd been stalking him for ages. Which she had. Awkward.

The next week she was only waiting for one of the teachers to mock her. Make her lose the bit of weird authority she'd gained. Make her controllable again. They were probably scared of her starting to bully children. Or starting a riot against the supervisors. (Which she had successfully done in one of the previous orphanages she'd been in. She'd also been in a secret smuggler ring and been falsely accused of burning a school down.)

Then, on Sunday, she was called to the headmistress. That confused her. She hadn't done anything. She'd been to the headmistress quite often already, but then she'd always been able to correctly guess why. (Usually she'd done something weird and potentially illegal like trying to make meth in the school's chemistry lab. She'd actually succeed in that.) Now she didn't have a clue. She quietly entered. She never greeted the woman that kept her here. "So, I heard you're interested in Sherlock Holmes. I've got a surprise for you." Oh shit. A deerstalker. She didn't use the pause the headmistress had clearly made for her to ask what the surprise was. "I contacted Doctor Watson and told him you were really interested in Mr. Holmes and asked if you could stay somewhere in London and help with their work. I told him you had some serious skills in chemistry and deduction. He responded that you could stay with their landlady for two weeks or so. You're leaving tomorrow."


	2. Odd Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the title kinda gives it away

She spent the evening packing her things together. Now, she wasn’t like one of those Dickins’ orphans that only had one set of clothes but still, when she had everything together she was surprised by how little she actually owned. She had enough but still, there were no old clothes she’d keep out of sentiment. No new clothes she’d own and never wear. No festive stuff to only wear once or twice a year. To summarise, none of the stuff she’d have if that place was her home.   
She was woken up rather early in the morning. Excited. Actually excited. She hadn’t expected that. Quietly, she snuck to the small wardrobe, the far left one in a line of small wardrobes. Not in any way personally decorated except for the burn traces a self-made bomb had left. (One of the reasons she’d previously been sent to the headmistress) She picked out her clothes, a T-Shirt with a colourful reptile she’d made in one of the annoying crafting courses the orphanage had organised and heavily used looking jeans with traces various bush hiding times, nightly escapades and scientific experiments had left; catching herself thinking it would impress Holmes most. Also, a big men’s watch she assumed to have nicked from her dad and a wing-shaped charm on a necklace she believed to be her mum’s. In the bathroom, she looked at the girl in the mirror in front of her and was amused by how much of a mess she was. Her bright orange curls she’d cut herself using crafting scissors, her pale freckles and her big, blue-green eyes with a touch of brown on the left one stood in a harsh contrast to the scar on her lip, her size of 5’7 and the focused, serious look on her face. You could’ve guessed her thirteen and eighteen at the same time.   
Seeing the janitor, the headmistress and one of the male secretaries at the door of the dorm room, she put on her coat, grabbed her bag and quietly snuck an army knife into her pocket. “You seriously think I need two men escorting me?”, she laughed and looked at the headmistress. “I think you could easily take down both of them and more but sending the entire personnel with you seemed a little weird”, the woman smiled back and accompanied them to the front door. “Have a good time. Try not to come back.”   
During the two and a half-hour train ride she kept herself busy by observing the other people on the train. The first task she set herself, always the first task was to find the person most likely to be a threat. After a while of looking around and not seeing anyone, she noticed a black-haired man with dark eyes sitting two rows behind her. He was dressed smartly and looked so extraordinarily normal that she assumed he was doing his best to blend in. After noticing her gaze, he looked at her in surprise. Maybe he was someone who knew her from her past. An enemy of her father or something like that. She remembered having read somewhere that if a person stared at you for more than five seconds, they either wanted sex or to kill you. (She hoped it was the second reason) Next task was finding the person who was the easiest to murder. In that, she couldn’t decide whether it was the secretary “guarding” her or the woman sitting across the floor who was constantly on the phone and didn’t seem to notice any of her surroundings. For both of them she figured injected poison would work best, she just didn’t happen to have any on her.  
When they finally arrived at Paddington Station, she got up and was amused by the two men escorting her, the janitor in front of her and the secretary at the back. As she walked past the suspicious suit man, he looked at her again. The secretary put his hand on her shoulder, almost as if he was thinking she was going to run away with the potential serial killer. To mess with him a little, she suddenly stopped, causing him to run into her. “Oh, come on.”, she said quietly. “I’m not going to run away with some random stranger. And if I was, you couldn’t stop me.”   
At the platform, she immediately noticed Holmes and Watson standing next to each other waiting for her. She quickly scanned them. Watson looked tired and had some stains of baby food on the shirt he was wearing under his open jacket. He’d apparently left the baby with someone else, likely the landlady, and looked almost relieved about that. Holmes was shorter than she’d expected and looked equally tired. She didn’t notice any baby traces on him, only some fresh stains on his trousers. By their colour and position, quite like the ones she wore with pride, she got to the conclusion that he’d been up late experimenting with Chlorine and some other, apparently inflammable substance she couldn’t quite identify. Then he’d tried to hide the traces, which apparently worked given that Watson didn’t seem to know about them. She suspected he’d be slightly pissed if he knew his friend was experimenting with explosives around his daughter. She walked up to them, slightly straightening her pose as she noticed Holmes observing her. As she reached them, Watson extended his hand, looked at her and said: “You must be Lucia, nice to meet you.” Looking at the two men behind her, he added: “I think we’re going to have some fun the next two weeks.” She took his hand: “Hi, we’ll see. And I’m okay with pretty much every nickname that makes the whole thing sound a little less pretentious.” She looked over to Holmes. “Nice trousers, but why Chlorine? It makes the mixture less controllable.” He looked genuinely surprised, smiled and said: “It was worth a try. I see, you thought that too about a year ago, am I right?” “A year and a half.” She smiled and took her bag back from the janitor who had offered to take it in an attempt to make her escort look less than an escort and more natural. “Shall we?”


End file.
